


life's fullness

by rynleaf



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Byleth learns to have Feelings after Crimson Flower, Crack-ish, F/F, Fluff, Gratuitous Obliviousness, Light Angst, this is really dumb but here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22926853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rynleaf/pseuds/rynleaf
Summary: “You’re avoiding me. You left the ring behind. I don’t understand. What did I do wrong?” Byleth asks, hunching in Edelgard’s chair. She knows she should feel shame, or embarrassment, or something, but she cannot find it in herself to care: everything has been going sideways ever since her heart began beating, and she feels small and fragile with the weight of it. Edelgard stands close now, hands clasped tightly in front of her.“My teacher,” she starts. Sighs. Then, as Byleth watches, the Emperor disappears from her expression and leaves behind a young woman, uncertain and a little sad, eyes shadowed, face drawn. Edelgard drops to her knees in front of her. Her lashes are wet with unshed tears.Byleth reaches out to touch her shoulder, startled.“My teacher, my teacher, how can I tell you about my shame?” Edelgard asks. “After everything you have given me, that I still wanted more?”-In which the goddess breaks Byleth's feelings, Edelgard pines, and Hubert is very, very tired.
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 29
Kudos: 379





	life's fullness

**Author's Note:**

> I typed this up in two hours so it's a little rushed, but I had Feelings about the possible effect of the whole goddess thing on Byleth post-Crimson Flower and... this happened

  
  
  


Byleth turns the ring around in her palm and remembers Jeralt’s expression when he showed it to her first: a little fragile, melancholy, smiling. The ring is a dainty, silver thing with a floral design and an inlay of purple stone. It’s cold even after being tucked into Byleth’s pocket the entire night. 

_ One day, I hope you’ll give this ring to someone you love,  _ Jeralt said with that same soft expression. Byleth has been wondering since about the meaning of the word  _ love.  _

“Byleth?”

Byleth turns, startled to see Edelgard standing a few paces behind her on the walkway to the Tower, hair down and wrapped in a coat that makes her look so much softer and younger than her full Emperor’s regalia. She looks tired. Byleth’s unmoving heart squeezes faintly, a slow, lurching sensation that is at once expected and entirely strange, and she smiles as she beckons Edelgard closer. 

“I was wondering if I was going to find you here,” Edelgard says. 

“I like it here,” Byleth replies softly. It’s the truth: there is something that draws her to this place, even half-ruined as it is now, ivy crawling up the tower walls in stubborn determination to reach the top. It fills her with a dull sensation of ‘home’ and ‘loss’ comparable only to what she feels when she spends time with her uncles among Jeralt’s mercenary company. 

Edelgard is here. With her presence, the sensation feels complete. 

Byleth nods, once, to herself. Edelgard’s hand is warm when she takes it--she makes a questioning sound, surprised, but for Byleth, it feels right. Inevitable. 

“Here,” she says, and places the ring in Edelgard’s palm. 

“My teacher--,” Edelgard starts, but Byleth cuts her off with a shake of her head. 

“Not anymore. Nothing left for me to teach you.”

Edelgard looks at her, eyes wide, stunned. Then she takes a shaking breath and curls her fingers around the ring. 

“This is important for you, isn’t it?” 

Byleth nods. Edelgard nods back, then smiles. 

“Let’s go back. We both need rest.”

Byleth nods again, and falls into step beside Edelgard as they return to their respective quarters through the winding pathways of Garreg Mach’s gardens. 

Tomorrow, they march for Fhirdiad. 

The day after, it will be over either way. 

  
  


The last thing Byleth remembers, after the Immaculate One falls and before everything goes dark, is a sharp pain in her chest and Edelgard’s frightened expression, the curtain of her hair untangled from its severe style sometime in the past few hours. Distantly she registers Sylvain shouting her name, the warm, tingling sensation she has learned to associate with Linhardt’s healing magic. Wounds stop bleeding and cells knot. Gazing up at Edelgard’s face, Byleth feels her heart breaking into pieces. 

Then, nothing. 

Hubert will tell her later that she was out for a good fifteen minutes, that Edelgard refused to be parted with her lifeless body, that Linhardt was caught  _ weeping-- _ when she comes to, it is to the sensation of strong, battle-trained arms cradling her close, the rhythmic movement of quiet sobs against her face, the noises of a battle, winding down. 

“Edelgard,” she says, and she is jostled uncomfortably as Edelgard jerks back, tear tracks clear on her face as she looks down, disbelieving. 

_ “Byleth.”  _

Byleth smiles and raises a hand to Edelgard’s cheek, thumb swiping away some of the grime. 

It feels…

It  _ feels.  _

“Huh,” Byleth says, and lays her other hand across her breastbone. 

Under skin and armour, she can feel it: a steady rhythm of something that laid quiet for as long as she knew herself. 

“Byleth, you’re crying,” Edelgard says. 

“So are you,” Byleth replies, and feels herself shake with sobs, with the urge to laugh, to kick something, the deep, unfurling desire to kiss Edelgard senseless. 

She thinks of Jeralt’s ring. 

“Edelgard,” she says between two shuddering breaths. “Edelgard.”

“Yes.”

“I’m going to do something now.”

“Okay, but--” 

The kiss is. 

The  _ kiss _ is. 

“Oh,” she says into Edelgard’s mouth, then does it again. Her hands shake where they clutch at Edelgard’s red overcoat. “Oh, I didn’t know it was supposed to feel like  _ this.”  _

_ “B--Byleth?”  _

“I think something’s wrong,” Byleth says, trying to hold onto her sense of reality as everything in her mind slowly implodes. “My heart is beating.” 

Edelgard is staring into the middle distance, hand half raised toward her as if she wanted to touch. 

“You  _ kissed _ me,” she says, stunned. 

“Yes,” Byleth says. Of course she did. The statement is redundant, and kind of stupid. “Edelgard. Something is  _ wrong.”  _

Edelgard’s expression falters, then shutters into the neutral mask of Emperor so fast, it takes Byleth several seconds to catch up. She said something. She isn’t sure what, but she wants to wipe whatever it was from Edelgard’s memory: she wants her open disbelief back, the sparkles in her eyes. It’s confusing. It’s a  _ lot. _

“Edelgard.”

“Of course,” Edelgard says with a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “I’ll fetch Manuela.” 

“I,” Byleth starts, but Edelgard is gone before she can sort through the chaos in her head enough to string words in an order resembling sense. 

She sits up, takes in the mountainous dragon corpse, the still smouldering buildings. Imperial soldiers support each other to stretchers. Linhardt is leaning against a wall a few paces to the side, head dropped onto Caspar’s shoulder. 

“What,” Byleth starts. Linhardt heaves a put upon sigh. 

“I’m too tired to explain,” he says, then promptly pretends to fall asleep. 

Edelgard strides back with a harried looking Manuela in tow, but hovers in the background instead of returning to Byleth’s side, and the disappointment sends another wave of  _ feeling _ wrecking through Byleth’s body. She shudders.

“Shit,” she says. I’m.” 

“None of that, now,” Manuela reprimands, and lays a hand on Byleth’s back, checks her pulse, feels her forehead. Byleth can feel magic crawl up her veins into her heart. The sensation makes her squirm. 

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” she says. 

“Nothing, as far as I can tell,” Manuela says, sounding impatient, “you are perfectly healthy. Miraculously so, considering, well…,” she takes in the corpse, the mangled buildings, the medical tent heaving with injured soldiers, “all this.”

“My heart is beating,” Byleth says. 

“Yes, I should certainly hope so, dear. Now, if there’s nothing else--”

“You don’t understand. My  _ heart _ is  _ beating,”  _ Byleth insists through the sense of rising heat, fingers reaching subconsciously for the Creator’s Sword lying abandoned by her side. Manuela gives her an unimpressed look. 

“If there is nothing else,” she repeats, and Edelgard swoops in before Byleth can do something unforgivable, or possibly cry. 

“Thank you, Manuela. I appreciate it.” 

Manuela stomps away in the direction of the medical tent, and Byleth is left with a tangle of frustration and disappointment squirming in her belly with nowhere to go. 

“I don’t like this,” she says. Her voice wobbles. Edelgard steps closer, reaches a hand out, then thinks better of it. 

It feels bitter. Five minutes ago, Byleth was ready to split apart with a bright feeling of joy. Now, that aborted gesture turns it all into ash in her mouth. 

“Let’s go home, my teacher,” Edelgard says gently. Byleth looks up at the sky, clear and blue like something momentous didn’t just happen, like her world wasn’t just shaken to its core, and sighs. 

“Okay.”

  
  


-

  
  


There was a time Byleth thought of herself more as a construct than woman: she knew, then, that the thought was supposed to be  _ sad,  _ but the emotion somehow never paired with it like it should have. 

_ The child never cries,  _ Jeralt’s diary says. Byleth wipes a stray tear off her cheek and thinks,  _ this child cries now, father. _

It takes her a while to figure it out. In her defense, Sothis was rendered quiet in her mind a long time ago. The clues line up one after the other: her old eyes; the Creator’s Sword, dormant; her heart beating away the seconds at a steady pace. She stops mid-turn in the Enbarr Palace’s solar room: a vase lies on the floor, broken, and Byleth reaches experimentally for the part of her brain that  _ yanks _ time backwards. 

Nothing happens. 

Byleth asks for a broom and a dustpan, and picks the shards off the floor by herself. 

  
  


“It’s been weeks,” Hubert says. Byleth has seen him seething with anger and gleeful with joy, eyebrows creasing as he considers a problem, the distant look on his face when he returns from his night missions once more unscathed. She has never seen him distraught before. 

“I don’t know what to do,” he continues. “First I thought it was battle fatigue. She is prone to periods of depression, yes, but this--”

“She doesn’t talk to me anymore, Hubert,” Byleth interjects quietly. “Not like before.”

“What did you  _ do,” _ Hubert snaps. “She’s been like this since Fhirdiad.  _ You  _ happened in Fhirdiad. You and this whole…,” he gestures at Byleth, encompassing it all, “thing.” 

Byleth sighs and shakes her head. 

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” 

Hubert drags both of his hands down his face, gives her a curt bow, and leaves. 

Byleth puts a hand over her newly working heart, and does her best to swallow the twisting sensation that makes its home there. 

It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly Edelgard started avoiding her: the memory of their return to Enbarr is blurry, washed with intense, feverish emotions Byleth has struggled to subdue those days. She remembers Linhardt’s cool hands on her forehead. She remembers clutching somebody close, remembers strong arms holding her as she cried, then screamed in anger, then cried again. Caspar calls it her ‘beast phase’. Manuela swats him every time he says it within her earshot, and corrects it to  _ manic episode. _

Neither of those things sound good. 

Byleth finds herself missing the Goddess Tower and the peace she used to find there. Jeralt’s mercenaries--Samson’s mercenaries now, now that her eldest uncle took charge of them at last--are running errands in old Kingdom territory. The Black Eagle Strike Force is scattered across the Empire. Hubert is wrapped up in Ferdinand. Sylvain and Felix are off gallivanting who knows where, investigating this monster rumour or that, Ingrid chasing after them with the countenance of a harried mother saddled with two small children. 

“I’m lonely,” Byleth says to herself one day, standing once again in the solar room shadowed by plants from all over the continent, and sinks to the floor with a sense of  _ hugeness. _

Everybody is living life, and she is left here: a relic of war, joints creaking, heart beating relentlessly on. And Edelgard is avoiding her. 

Byleth finds that thought the most unbearable. 

Edelgard’s study is empty when Byleth pushes the door open. She steps around the room, touching the spines of books that line the shelves, spinning a globe around its axis until it displays Brigid and Dagda, jagged lines of mountains drawing a border between them. She fingers Edelgard’s quills, neatly arranged on her desk. The chair behind looks massive, cushioned and comfortable: there is a knitted shawl draped over it in soft lilacs and blues, and Byleth leans in to bury her nose in it in a fit of self-indulgence. It smells like Edelgard. Ink, soap, soft floral perfume. 

Byleth sits down, leafs through some paperwork, then catches sight of something shiny half-hidden under a pile of foreign treaties. 

Silver. Purple. Familiar. 

Byleth stares at Jeralt’s ring, and feels her heart break all over again. 

Edelgard finds her like that, not long after: Byleth is still sitting in the chair, shoulders wrapped in the knitted shawl, raising betrayed eyes at the silhouette outlined in gold by the corridor lamp. The room is wrapped in the half-gray of twilight. The ring rests on Byleth’s palm, and she raises it toward Edelgard’s frozen figure. 

“I gave this to you,” she says, and hates that her voice sounds small. “I gave it. You should have kept it. Why didn’t you keep it?” 

Edelgard finally enters the room and closes the door behind herself. She doesn’t put the light on. 

“How are you feeling, Byleth?”

Byleth feels tired, so tired. The ring is cold in her hand. 

“Answer me. Please.” 

Edelgard approaches slowly, hair still up in its twin wraps around her headdress. Her eyes are dark and sad. 

“I…” 

“You’re avoiding me. You left the ring behind. I don’t understand. What did I do wrong?” Byleth asks, hunching in Edelgard’s chair. She knows she should feel shame, or embarrassment, or  _ something, _ but she cannot find it in herself to care: everything has been going sideways ever since her heart began beating, and she feels small and fragile with the weight of it. Edelgard stands close now, hands clasped tightly in front of her. 

“My teacher,” she starts. Sighs. Then, as Byleth watches, the Emperor disappears from her expression and leaves behind a young woman, uncertain and a little sad, eyes shadowed, face drawn. Edelgard drops to her knees in front of her. Her lashes are wet with unshed tears. 

Byleth reaches out to touch her shoulder, startled. 

“My teacher, my teacher, how can I tell you about my shame?” Edelgard asks. “After everything you have given me, that I still wanted more?” 

“What?”

“I know it was nothing,” Edelgard continues, voice wavering. “Manuela said something  _ did _ happen, after, and you were so fragile, I… I dared think, for a second, that you might… I have always been greedy, my teacher.” 

“Edelgard.” 

“The ring… just reminded me of my failure.”

_ “Edelgard.” _

“I couldn’t tell you about my desire, and I could not bear to see you, not yet, and so… forgive me, please, I am weak and my heart wants you so. It will pass. Please be patient with me.” 

Byleth freezes. A tear is rolling down Edelgard’s cheek, and she reaches out to wipe it off: it is the exact mirror of the moment after capturing Fhirdiad, after the Immaculate One, after the goddess disappeared from Byleth’s body and left her overwhelmed and breathless. 

“This is stupid,” Byleth says. Edelgard looks up, expression hurt. “Why do you think I gave you this?” Byleth demands, disbelieving. The ring glints in the low light, and Edelgard blushes from her neck up to her hairline. 

“I…”

“This is so stupid,” Byleth repeats. 

“I don’t…”

“I want to spend my life with you. I wanted it since before my stupid heart started beating. I wanted it since I first saw you split a bandit in half with your practice axe. I wanted it since… since forever. This is  _ so _ stupid.” 

_ “My teacher!” _

“I told you not to call me that!” Byleth snaps, finally losing patience. She bends down to grab Edelgard by the waist and pull her up. “Stop kneeling, for the love of the goddess.”

“I don’t understand,” Edelgard says. 

“Good,” Byleth says and draws her even closer, so close that her eyes are level with Edelgard’s collarbone, and she presses a kiss to it. “I don’t understand it either.”

Edelgard gasps. It is very soft. 

Byleth’s new heart beats a steady rhythm as she reaches up to tilt Edelgard’s face toward her, lashes still wet, mouth parted. 

“Kiss me,” Byleth says.

Edelgard breathes a choked sigh, then does just that. 

  
  


Hubert von Vestra, Minister of the Imperial Household and in a general sense Creature of the Vast Darkness, wakes to insistent pounding on his door. He extricates himself from between Ferdinand’s sheets, running a comforting hand over golden locks as his lover makes a discontented noise at the sudden cold. 

“I will kill whoever that is,” Hubert mutters under his breath. “It will be slow and merciless, and…”

Edelgard is standing on the corridor, expression fraught, and she latches onto his arm the minute he opens the door. 

“Your Majesty?” Hubert feels his heart drop. “What’s wrong? What happened?” 

“Hubert,” Edelgard breathes, frantic, “I think I want to marry her. What if she says  _ no?”  _

Hubert glances down at Edelgard’s hand, silver ring around her finger, and resists the urge to slap his own forehead at great cost.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!


End file.
